Little Factory On The Dutch Prairie

In the Netherlands new business parks pop up everywhere. At the same time 16% of the office buildings stand empty. The Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman came up with this pretty remarkable project that criticizes this phenomenon, as well as the architectural styles at business parks. In the Dutch city of Drachten he built a Little Factory out of corrugated steel roof sheets. The small three-dimensional factory pictogram is located at an industrial site under construction in the town’s so-called Azeven Noord area. It questions the architecture on business parks as well as the useless building madness. Hofman’s artwork functions as a landmark as long as the site is empty. In the future the Little Factory might be used for an artist in residence program.

As cities are incredibly complex, so must be any sort of urban sustainability, which can come in many more forms than a ‘Green City’. With so much going on in an urban environment, there’s bound to be some excess energy flows. So why waste that energy, if you can turn it into something that’s better, fun, and productive? That’s what we call Parasite Urbanism — strategies and urban interventions that creatively make use of spaces or energies that otherwise would be neglected or would go to waste, contributing to a wider concept of urban sustainability. Let’s take a look at three of the best examples of urban parasites that we’ve highlighted on the Pop Up City. They all make use of a variety of otherwise neglected spaces or energy, launching them into places that are more useful, more productive and more fun!

The StadsGarderobe (‘City Wardrobe’) is an empty shop in the center of Groningen, Netherlands, that has been transformed into a central wardrobe for the city. People that visit the city for shopping during the day and people that go out at night can use the City Wardrobe to leave their jacket, bag, or all other items they don’t want to carry.

Yesterday Guido Tamino started his project Print Stuff. Tamino has installed a printer in his room and enables people from all over the world to print stuff over the Internet. Everyone is invited to submit a short note together with a drawing or picture via a fully automated web form. After hitting ‘print’, a clean…